David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

-----but we had to provide an additional €1.5 billion last year to essentially plug a hole in what were cumulative deficits that had built up over a number of years. We were not allocating sufficient funding to deal with even existing levels of service. We had many discussions in this committee with the previous Minister for Health, the head of the HSE and the Secretary General of the Department and we were led to believe that very substantial savings would have to be achieved because, even as a standing start every year, we are talking about somewhere in the region of €700 million to €1 billion for so-called existing levels of service even before we can look at any additional capacity. Savings were identified in relation to agency spend and management consultancy. When I look at all of those areas, €251 million in the context of the overall budget is not really achieving the types of savings that we were led to believe would be achieved.